Linguistics of nucleotide sequences: morphology and comparison of vocabularies

Details

Linguistics of nucleotide sequences: morphology and comparison of vocabularies

Journal

Journal of Biomolecular Structure and Dynamics

Author(s)

Brendel V., Beckmann J. S., Trifonov E. N.

ISSN

0739-1102 (Print)

Publication state

Published

Issued date

08/1986

Volume

4

Number

1

Pages

11-21

Notes

Comparative StudyJournal Article --- Old month value: Aug

Abstract

The concept of "words" in continuous languages devoid of blanks is introduced and an operational definition of words given. With this novel concept nucleotide sequences become object for linguistic analysis. The typical word size of the nucleotide language is found to be 3 to 5 (tri- to pentamers). Different genomes have distinct vocabularies. Comparison of these vocabularies can serve as a basis for revealing functional and evolutionary relatedness of sequences.